Posts

Showing posts from October, 2007

Birgir Andresson 1955-2007

Sad news today that Birgir Andresson died yesterday. Each time I have visited Reykjavik arrangements have been made for us to meet but each time for one reason or another we missed each other. After my installation at Safn, his collaboration with Ragna Róbertsdóttir was the next show. He has a couple of works in the ICELAND show at Bury Art Gallery at the moment and we hoped to show him more fully in future years. It feels like a destiny unfulfilled. www.i8.is/new/birgir.htm

There Would Be No Way

Image

The Myth of the North

It was with a mixture of nausea and exhilarating irritation that I had to visit the worst modern building I know: the Lowry Arts Centre ( www.lowry.com ). I find myself in that odd bind where something is so appalling you want to warn people not to go near it but at the same time wanting to recommend it so that you can share the adrenaline rush of experiencing something truly jaw-dropping. There is one angle that I don’t mind the Lowry from – that is on Google Earth where you can see that it was designed with some cube, circle, triangle structure. But from the ground it is an absolute stinker. There is no architecture logic from the outside, but when you go inside there is no human sense to it. It is no exaggeration that it makes me feel physically sick to be in there too long. If the spaces had been designed as a centre for Overactively Disordered children with colour blindness it would be excusable but the glaring juxtaposition of brutal purples with orange, red and yellow garishly